Propaganda - Soviet state photography collection

Have any of you seen the book "Propaganda: Photographs from Soviet Archives."

http://www.amazon.com/Propaganda-Photographs-Archives-Mark-Holborn/dp/1905825439

It's a marvellous collection of images that were part of the photographic archive of the Soviet Union - all in black and white. Although many of the images are of factories and tractors ploughing fields, they are all wonderfully artistic and beautifully composed. It's not all tractor production of course - there are some wonderful pictures from the space program, as well as some that reflect the diversity of people within the FSU. I love this book - and the price for me was right - Waterstones in the UK, due to some inefficiency of the capitalist system seemed to have it priced wrong at the time I bought it - I got it for £5.

I found myself wondering what equipment was used to take the images - I'm sure there are some taken with a 16mm fisheye - wonder if it was the Zenitar 16mm? :)

Jonathan,

I always wondered about that book, I've seen it before, but never looked inside. Thanks for sharing your thoughts on it. I think Zenitar is a bit too new to be used in those photographs [;)]. I think the brand Zenitar (and Zoom, our resident KMZ rep will correct me here if I'm wrong) was coined in 1990s. I would take a guess it was probably one of the early wide angle Jupiter or FED lenses, maybe even the wide medium format lens from Kiev 6C.

I picked up another book at last camera show here in Chicago, I've never seen it before, but it seems very similar to this one described above. Here are some pictures I took of it to show you all:

http://www.ussrphoto.com/UserContent/332010_IMG_0574.JPG

http://www.ussrphoto.com/UserContent/332010_IMG_0574.JPG

http://www.ussrphoto.com/UserContent/332010_IMG_0575.JPG

http://www.ussrphoto.com/UserContent/332010_IMG_0575.JPG

Best regards,
Vlad

That book also looks interesting - and I will look for it. It looks as though it covers a much broader time frame - the photos in the "Propaganda" book are all from the 1960s to the 1980s.

Kiev 88, Kiev 6c, many Zenits

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="MS Trebuchet, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by aramaki</i>
<br />Have any of you seen the book "Propaganda: Photographs from Soviet Archives."
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I'm still waiting to the next books of this series:
"Propaganda: Photographs from British Archives" and "Propaganda: Photographs from USA Archives" ;)

Lets not forget: "Propaganda: Photographs from China" and "Propaganda: Photographs from All Governments in the World Throughout History" ;-)

But the Soviets, Russians, and Ukrainians have always been at the top of the list in great photography of all kinds, in my opinion. Take a look at Russian and Soviet "pictorialist" photography (the style that Steiglitz made important in the US) to see how great this style can be. And of course, Rodchenko can not be beat!

Thanks Jonathan and Vlad for pointing those books out!

Regards, Bill

The Capitalist world has always had its propaganda too - just as much. I would count all advertising as propaganda, which presents a selfish individualist ethos, and there is plenty going on in the British media at the moment to do with the war in Afghanistan.

The book "Propaganda: Photographs from Soviet Archives" has a foreword by weapons inspector Hans Blix, where he mentions the propaganda used by Tony Blair to sell the Iraq War to the British public. No - the book is not one-sided propaganda ;)

Kiev 88, Kiev 6c, many Zenits

Also Finland had propaganda pics, and even I was involved in taking them in 1980 when our president Kekkonen (since 1956) that time was senile but press pics were not allowed to show it...
A bit like Cuba and Korea in the recent years, nobody knows if the old presidents are/were even alive...
Best regards,
Juhani